Thursday, March 30, 2006

So Far So Goot

Had a nice little run at the Soko tables yesterday, doubling up on the very first hand at one of my tables. I was dealt (10d) 10s and it folded to guy showing (hole card) 7s, who put in a pot-sized raise. (The As was exposed and folded.)

It folds around to me and I'm last to act. Re-raising pretty much screams "I have a pair of tens" and I'm not too scared of many cards, assuming he's got a pair of 7s. If he's getting slightly jiggy with (K-Js) 7s or (8s) 7s or (6s) 7s, well cool, he can get jiggy all day with that.

On third street I'm holding (10d) 10s 8h and villain has (hole card) 7s 2d. He's first to act and bets pot again. I min-raise and he obliges and comes over the top, I push, he calls, and I take it down when I hit two pair on fifth street. My 10s would have won it, though, as he has the Ad in the hole, for Ad 7s 2d on third street when we got it all in.

I'm obviously still very much in learning mode, but I have to think that's a pretty poor play, with the As already out and mucked. Yeah, he's aggressively reresenting a pair of 7s and has the A overcard and odds are I don't have a pair, but the absolute best he can hope for on third street is that I have (9) 10s 8h but even then I have around at least a dozen outs, as the four straight beats him plus any pair, assuming he doesn't hit his two outer to pair his A.

Added a silly little tote board over to the right in the sidebar, as far as the current status of this endeavor. Bankroll is currently sitting at $1,803 and I'm about halfway through clearing a 600 euro bonus at a B2B site, scheduled to be paid out in just under a month. It's going to be a little weird grinding through all these B2B sites as they almost all pay out the bonus 30-60 days from the date you signup (assuming you play the required hands to clear it), not from the date you clear the bonus, etc. I'm going to have to be a little more aware of my bankroll management, as far as not hitting dead spots with my money tied up on sites or waiting for cashouts or bonuses to be credited.

I also may have to back off my strict no-HE stance, too. The Hunter of Donkeys is very wise, as he pointed out the difficulty of clearing bonuses when playing Stud variants, due to the fact that you can't crank up 6-8 tables and just grind away on autopilot since paying attention is, umm, a good idea. The pace is also much slower so you get many fewer hands in per hour. Plus it's difficult to find games sometimes, whereas you can always plenty of HE games running.

So I'll probably give myself a little leeway as far as playing NLHE if need be. The goal is to have fun and learn new games (and, you know, make money) and that's what I plan on doing most of the time. If I get in a bind, though, and need to quickly bang out a bonus before it expires, I don't think it's cheating too much to resort to NLHE to do it. I can definitely use more experience there anyway, as 95% of my poker play has been at LHE.